In the early-morning hours of October 7, Shin Bet, the IDF’s security service, began detecting hints of activity across the border with Gaza. According to a report in Haaretz, it was nothing concrete, just “an accumulation of signs or fragments of information [that] aroused certain concern.” Telephone conferences were held, possible scenarios discussed. It was just an exercise, some argued; others suspected an isolated abduction attempt. Officers alerted IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, as well as Shin Bet director Ronen Bar. Shin Bet dispatched a small squad to hunt for any possible abduction incursion, but that was it. No general alert was issued. They would wait until morning for more information.
I am not an expert in Israeli military affairs. But I have spent years studying man-made disasters—and almost every case I’ve examined includes a scenario like the one above. People working in a hazardous environment notice small signs of trouble, pass those warnings along to their superiors, and then…nothing. The Titanic, for example, received multiple telegrams about icebergs in its path. In 2010, the crew of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig performed a test that suggested high-pressure methane might surge up the drill string—but after a second test produced a less worrisome result, managers decided work should proceed as normal. And, in an eerie parallel with October 7, the night before the 1986 launch of the space shuttle Challenger, anxious engineers requested a telephone conference with NASA brass. The rubber joints on the Shuttle’s booster rockets had had a history of leaking small jets of flame. The engineers worried that the very cold weather that night might make those rubber seals inflexible and thereby allow bigger, more dangerous leaks. After a long discussion, managers decided the launch should proceed because there weren’t enough data to justify scrubbing the mission.
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James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a City Journal contributing editor, cohost of the How Do We Fix It? podcast, and the former editor of Popular Mechanics.
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